


Things They Don't Understand

by Ferrenbach



Category: Gorillaz
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alcohol, Anxiety, Drug Use, Drug Withdrawal, Gen, Hospitals, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Language, Memory Loss, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-13 08:28:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12980118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferrenbach/pseuds/Ferrenbach
Summary: Murdoc is the most real person in the world, but it's hard to make people understand when he doesn't have the words.





	Things They Don't Understand

**Author's Note:**

> Additional warnings: Although there is nothing graphic, this fic implies sexual situations, drug use, alcohol use, and abusive interactions. There are brief mentions of bodily functions and fluids and other things associated with illness as well as moments of mental distress.

He always wakes early, but it’s too early to be awake because he’s certain he fell asleep only a few hours ago.

This doesn’t matter to the sunlight, which is filtering in through nicotine-stained curtains, and he can’t recall exactly where he is right now, but whoever owns the place has great taste in carpets because the pile’s so thick it’s nearly as good as a mattress and he doesn’t hurt nearly as much as he might have expected, but he does hurt because it’s morning and he doesn’t know when he last took a painkiller or even what’s become of his prescription, really, because any whiff of drugs at a party demands a subsumption into the general party mix, even if they’re his and he needs them.

His bladder is killing him.

Not quite enough to move, however. It’s warm on the floor in a heap of blankets and bodies with one bird pressed to his back – Johanna, he thinks, although the recollection requires a tremendous amount of effort – and one in his arms. He knows the one in his arms is Indira because she talked to him and cuddled with him and wasn’t put off when he commented on her smell, which is oranges and spice, a blend of perfume and shampoo.

What most people don’t understand is how important smell can be when you don’t see as well as others and, while he doesn’t think Indira truly understands either, she was at least willing to humour him. It even amused her to some extent and she demanded they play a game: tell her where she applied her perfume based on the intensity of the scent.

He doubts he won. It doesn’t matter. What matters is she let him nuzzle her all over, touch her all over, kiss her in places she might not have expected to be kissed. What matters is that it was a game and it was memorable and she’s imprinted more firmly in his mind than Johanna – “with an ‘H’… the ‘H’ isn’t silent!” – who wasn’t in it to be known or remembered.

“Why should I care?” she said. “I sure as fuck won’t remember _you_ in the morning.”

Which is fair, he supposes, because she doesn’t understand.

Neither does Indira, but she gave him the benefit of the doubt and he dreamt of her dark skin and dark hair and dark eyes

_(not as dark as his, but still…)_

and he thinks he could love her, at least for a little while. Long enough to make a memory of her. Long enough to make her real.

But his bladder is killing him and he really needs to get up. No matter how warm and close it is curled up on the floor. No matter how silky-soft Indira’s skin is beneath his hands.

He tries his best not to wake either of them as he slips out from between them. They murmur sleepily when the blankets peel away, disturbed by the sudden chill and the loss of his body heat – such as it is – but neither of them wake. Instead they move unconsciously toward each other, filling his vacated space, erasing his existence.

He finds most of his clothing on the way to the bathroom. Away from the aura of oranges and spice, he smells of stale beer and sex. Beer and sex are excellent things on the whole, but he hates smelling of them the next morning and hopes the house’s owner doesn’t mind him using the shower, assuming no one has slept in it. That happened once and he was forced to sponge bathe in the sink, which raised all kinds of questions he doesn’t want to answer a second time.

The bathroom is blessedly free of unconscious bodies and he closes the door (but doesn’t lock it) and takes care of business, bracing himself against the wall with one hand, wondering if he isn’t still a little drunk. He isn’t quite hungover. His head aches, but that isn’t unusual. His head always aches to some degree or another, as his neck aches, and his back aches, and his shoulders ache…

He could run down the list, but he isn’t in the mood for children’s songs.

He scavenges some soap and takes control of the shower. The hot water is a blessing and he feels better – or at least less sore – as some of his stiffer muscles relax. He wasn’t going to bother washing his hair, but the shampoo is right there, so he steals just a little and enjoys the massage of working up a lather and washing it away, hot spray against his scalp. It even eases the headache a little, which is nice, although he knows it’s only a matter of time before it returns.

He half-hopes Indira will join him. That he disturbed her just enough to wake with the sound of the shower. That she would think it a game, sneak in, and join him. It would be a little added layer. A little extra something to remember her. He knows she’s studying medicine. Radiology. She has two brothers. Her parents immigrated when they were young, but she was born here and her accent is thick – pure Londoner – and she has no trouble with his. She has beautiful dark hair and beautiful dark skin and she accentuates her make-up with hints of gold that glitter like stars.

He repeats this to himself because she doesn’t join him and he needs something or he will forget. If he forgets, then sex is just another activity, divorced from the people involved, and he’s tired of losing people. Little deaths, stretching back over the years, spiralling away into the black hole of time.

That’s almost a song lyric and he toys with it as he towels his hair and dresses, and then dismisses it because it’s depressing and he’s tired.

He’s also sore and aching and he wants his medication, but good luck finding it in the press of bodies. He picks his way between them, picking up bottles and random pills, trying to get a look at them. The rising sun is brightening the room, but it isn’t enough. His vision is blurred at best, like viewing the world through a thin and murky film. He finds some that he thinks are his – the shape is right and the size is about right and the weight is negligible. The colour is… off, but colours are always off to him, depending on the quality of light, so he decides to chance them and, not able to find a clean cup, grabs a half-full glass of something clear, hoping it’s water.

It isn’t, but it’s too late now. He hopes the combination won’t kill him.

He finds his jacket on the floor and wonders if Murdoc is still around. He hopes so. He doesn’t know where he is and isn’t sure how to get home if he’s been abandoned.

He checks his pocket and finds his wallet, thankfully intact, but the money inside is pretty meagre and he’s not sure he’ll have enough for a cab. He supposes a cabbie would stop at a bank or ATM if asked, but he’d rather not push the issue. He begins a careful search of the house, glancing over every pile of sweaty, sleeping partygoers and eventually locates Murdoc in the back bedroom. This is a relief and he decides to let Murdoc sleep a bit longer.

All possible furniture is taken, so he sits on the stairs in the hallway and leans up against the wall, still tired, but unable to sleep. Certainly unable to rejoin Indira and… and… 

_(Jo_ hanna _. It’s Jo_ hanna _.)_

Johanna on the floor. They’ve closed ranks and there is no more room for him.

He fishes in his pockets and comes up with an unsmoked cigarette. Lighting it gives his hands something to do and he blows the smoke out slowly, attempting smoke rings, but not really paying enough to attention to see if he’s succeeded. He rather hopes the nicotine sparks something in his head, fires off some neurons and wakes him up entirely, but he isn’t harbouring many hopes. He feels a bit woozy and starts to suspect that the pills he took were not his after all.

It’s a suspicion that becomes a certainty over time as a feverish intensity overwhelms him. The heat of it eases some of his aches and pains, but not all, and he feels like his bones are slowly melting. Also queasy in the stomach, which is never a good sign. Nevertheless, he finishes the cigarette before making his clumsy way back upstairs to crouch down beside the bed and nudge Murdoc into some semblance of consciousness.

“Bloody Hell,” Murdoc breathes, coming to. “What fuckin’ time is it?”

“Dunno. Early.”

“Early? Sod off, then, Nancy. Go play with yourself.”

“I dun feel good,” he says, scrunching up his nose to look extra-pathetic. It doesn’t always work, but sometimes it does and it’s worth a shot. “Everything hurts an’ I feel sick.”

“Take a bloody pill, you twat,” Murdoc growls. One of his bed partners complains, but he tells them to sod off as well.

“I did, but I dun think it was’a right one,” he tells Murdoc. “Someone spilled ‘em outta the bottle last night and I can’t find ‘em. I took what I thought was them, but they weren’t.” When Murdoc opens his mouth to comment, he adds, “I can’t see ‘em right or the marks on ‘em. They’re too small.”

Murdoc says nothing for several minutes, only lies there half awake with his eyes rolled as far back into his head as he can comfortably hold them. Finally, he sighs.

“How bad?”

He hasn’t really thought that far, only that he feels hot and melty and sick, but he stops now to take in his environment and considers it.

“The carpet’s all fur and you got white spiders in your hair,” he says, and then, almost as an afterthought, “I feel like wax. I think I’m melting.”

“Fuck me,” Murdoc says and then forces his way out of the bed. The complaints increase and he tells them all to suck his dick, his singer’s off his bonce. “Wait downstairs. I need a few. Can you _get_ downstairs?”

He assures Murdoc that he probably can and gets downstairs, bumping into the wall once or twice and into another partygoer on their way up to use the bathroom. He yawns and props himself up in a corner between the kitchen and the front door and wills his stomach to settle down. The wall is silky-soft like… like Indira.

He already can’t remember what the party was about. It wasn’t important anyway and no one there has made an impression on him. No one but Indira, who made a game of her perfume. He suddenly wants to cry, but he doesn’t. It’s stupid. He already cries too much, sometimes for no reason at all – Hell, _usually_ for no reason at all – and he hates it, but he can’t stop it except sometimes, like right now. He doesn’t sob when it happens, the tears just pour out of him like his eyes have a leaky valve, but it drives him mad.

He doesn’t like feeling this way and he doesn’t like the weird looks people give him when he does. He tries to explain how an accident can mess up your responses, but he doesn’t have the words. People smile and nod at him, but they don’t understand.

Murdoc doesn’t understand either, but has witnessed it enough to know it can’t be helped, even if he’s more than willing to mock him about it. Or simply become impatient, like today, when he opens gummy eyes to see Murdoc, hungover and exasperated, reach out to wipe his tears away before they can spill down his cheeks.

He supposes he didn’t manage to stop them after all.

“You’re a fucking wreck, mate,” Murdoc growls, his annoyance at least partly affected. “You gonna hold yourself together until we get home?”

“Dunno,” he admits. His stomach feels like it’s gone through a wringer.

Murdoc grumbles and fishes for his keys. He isn’t as picky about showering and still smells of sweat and sex and alcohol, his hair oily and unkempt. It’s tempting to lean up against him – he must be more comfortable than the wall – but he’s apt to have a fit and, anyway, he needs to drive.

It’s a quiet ride, at least at first. Murdoc asks him questions about the party, darkly suggestive, and who he fetched up with. He answers a few, but he feels hotter and and sicker as they go along and it’s hard to talk. Or at least it’s hard to focus enough to talk. It doesn’t bother him much because he isn’t sure he wants to tell Murdoc about Indira anyway, not the important parts, although the other one – Jolene? Joanne! – is fair game.

Everything is canted and strange and his stomach rolls suddenly, not helped by Murdoc jumping the curb as he slams on the breaks.

“Out!” Murdoc orders. “Get out!” But he’s already got the door half-open, spilling out of the car and onto his hands and knees, vomiting onto the pavement.

He feels like he’s coming apart, like he’s the only thing left in the world, but then Murdoc is crouched beside him, rubbing his back in short, insistent strokes.

“Get it all up, now. There’s a lad,” he says, lighting a cigarette with his free hand. “No idea at all what you took?

He shakes his head when his stomach settles enough to breathe.

“Wha’dja take ‘em with?”

“Dunno. Vodka, maybe.”

Murdoc’s annoyance is palpable. “Why in the fucking Hell—?

“Thought it was water. Looked like water…”

“Your continued existence is a mystery to modern science,” Murdoc tells him. “I was hoping to avoid the A&E, but if you insist… You gonna puke again?”

“Dunno.”

“Good enough. Let’s go.”

He tries to stand, but his hands are shaky, his legs are wobbly, and the ground isn’t level. Murdoc catches one arm and hauls him up onto his feet, spilling him back into the vehicle. He bumps his head on the doorframe, which only aggravates the headache he’s already got, but Murdoc doesn’t say boo about it, just tells him to clamp his hands over his mouth and hold it in if he feels sick. It’s early enough that Murdoc can speed with few restrictions and he lays into the roadway with a vengeance, nearly putting him through the windscreen

_(again)_

with their arrival at the hospital.

“Wait,” Murdoc tells him, and strolls through the doors – he can stroll surprisingly quickly and still make it look like he’s not in a hurry – returning with a wheelchair.

“I’m not hauling your arse in there princess-style,” Murdoc says as he opens the car door. It’s hard to stand, but Murdoc grabs him by the armpit and guides him to the seat, telling him to get his damned legs out of the way before barrelling him through the doors.

“Stand aside, peons,” Murdoc barks, pushing him toward admissions. “Suspected overdose. Multiple unknown substances. Conscious, breathing, not bleeding, but vomiting and having hallucinations. Shaky and disoriented. Possible withdrawal from prescription painkillers mixed in.”

The nurses react immediately although Murdoc has no authority over them. Perhaps they appreciate his clear, precise descriptions. Perhaps he is simply that loud.

Murdoc blows through the front waiting room toward a side hall. One nurse protests, but he tells her to sod off, he’s an old hand at this. He knows damned well they need an immediate assessment, so find whatever rookie doctor drew the short straw and get it done. However, he does comply with the nurses who see that he knows what he’s about and merely direct him as to how he should proceed in this particular situation: which room to use, which bed, what clothing to remove or loosen.

“Let’s get you settled,” Murdoc tells him, helping him back up to his feet and sitting him on the bed. The curtain is pulled around him, his jacket peeled away – the cool air of the hospital a shock against his fevered skin – and then he’s permitted to lie down. He wants to curl up, but Murdoc won’t let him, insisting he lie on his back while his belt is unbuckled and his shoes removed. A nurse ducks through the curtain with a clipboard and Murdoc gestures her over.

“His name’s Pot. Stuart Harold Pot,” Murdoc tells her.

“Nuh, i’s 2-D,” he says grabbing Murdoc’s arm. He doesn’t like that name, Stuart. It’s fine for his folks to use it, but he doesn’t like it when others do. It isn’t a real name. Not anymore. “Tell ’em to call me 2-D.”

“They need to know what’s on your card, mate.”

“But I dun like—”

“I’ll tell them, sweetheart, but right now I need to you to shut your fucking cakehole.”

Murdoc fishes through his jacket for identification and tells the nurse his name is Stuart Harold Pot, but for the love of all things unholy, call him 2-D. White. Male. 23. His eyes are stable, old injury, stop asking. Proper English boy of no practising faith. Slight mental impairment from severe car accident or possibly just thick. Ongoing prescriptions due to same accident: pain, migraines, side effects, anxiety. Smoker. Sex in the last twenty-four hours. Alcohol in the last twenty-four hours. Marijuana in the last twenty-four hours. Drugs of undetermined origin in the last twenty-four hours. Not a suicide attempt, bad eyesight, thought they were his prescription. Chased them with alcohol, thought it was water.

“How many did you take then, love?”

He isn’t quite paying attention, distracted by the drone of Murdoc’s voice and a second nurse recording his vital signs, and the question startles him.

“Uh… dunno,” he says. “Two, I think.”

“Only two?”

“Uh… three. Maybe four.” He was sober when he took them, but he can honestly no longer remember. All he can think of is how much he wishes he had just stayed in bed with his arms around Indira. “She was oranges and stars.”

“Lovely. Less than five then?”

“Yeah,” he says. He knows that much. “Three. With cinnamon an’ cloves. I couldn’t remember the spices, but i’s cinnamon an’ cloves.”

“Sounds nice, D. Like pumpkin pie,” Murdoc says, and then turns to the nurse with the clipboard. “You see what I have to deal with?”

She says nothing in reply and, taking her silence as an invitation to continue, Murdoc does so.

“It’s not likely to kill him and if I knew what it was, I’d just bring him home to sleep it off, but I’m not equipped to deal with vomiting and talking to imaginary spiders. Especially if whatever he took means he didn’t take his regular medication and heavy withdrawal sets in. If nothing’s too wrong, he should be right as rain in a few hours.”

“I can’t stay here hours!” he complains. “I promised Noodle a film!”

“I’ll give her a call. She’ll understand.”

“But—”

“Look, I didn’t ask for this either. I especially didn’t ask for it by going around ingesting random drugs,” Murdoc says. “How are the spiders?”

“Dun make fun…”

“I’m serious. I need to know how bad you’re tripping.”

“I wan’t talking to ‘em. They were in your hair. I think the walls are hot. They’re runny. An’ white. Dunno if there’re spiders. The spiders’re white too.”

“Right then,” Murdoc says. “Listen, be good for the nurses, okay? I need a fag.”

He begs Murdoc not to go, tries to grab his arm and misses. He doesn’t like hospitals. He doesn’t want to be alone. He’s sore and hot and feels loose and watery and he hasn’t had a cigarette in a while although Murdoc’s had one on the way over and his stomach hurts and his head hurts and he doesn’t like giving blood samples and he doesn’t want to be monitored, he doesn’t _like_ it, and he should never have gotten up this morning. Murdoc’s already gone, of course, and he’s babbling all this to a nurse who tries to look sympathetic, but who mainly looks bored and tired and interchangeable with all the other nurses.

He doesn’t mind the nurses, they’re drones, but he hates hospitals. He hates what comes out of them. Hates that he lost his mind in them.

One of the hardest things to explain – because he doesn’t have the words – is that events have feelings and people don’t. The nurses are drones and the doctors are mannequins, but the walls bleed anxiety and fear, injury and loss. His hair, its colour, his eyes, and all things associated with his memories. Dry and hollow, black and white, an old-time film of life past. He’s scared of what he’ll lose this time. He can’t afford any less in his head.

He tells this to the nurses and to the doctor who comes in to review those tests that can be reviewed immediately, tries to determine the dilation of his pupils, and makes a pronouncement. The doctor nods as he speaks, but doesn’t understand, or else ignores him, a very real possibility.

The doctor tells him to lie still, they’re going to move the bed down the hall, switch it out with another, and put him in a quieter room where he can rest a while, but he doesn’t want to go because Murdoc won’t be able to find him. He doesn’t want to go and tries to get up and this causes a fuss, but he doesn’t want to go because Murdoc won’t find him and he’s known Murdoc practically all of his life. All of his life that matters. Known Murdoc longer than everyone but his parents and some days he’s not even sure about that. He doesn’t want to go anywhere unless it’s home and he only stops fighting when he’s told they will sedate him if he won’t, that he needs to be still, that they will tell Murdoc where he is, but mostly that they will sedate him if he won’t because as much as he likes the idea of knocking the pain and fear out of himself with medication, he doesn’t trust the hospital to do it.

They don’t move him very far, just a little ways down the hall, to a smaller room with only two beds, the other empty and a curtain drawn between them, but he doesn’t like it. It’s close and it’s stuffy and it’s hot and he doesn’t like it.

He hums to himself, all the tunes he can remember, not his own, but the ones from when he was younger, the ones that made him happy once because he remembers happy when it’s set to music, remembers concerts, remembers the charge of the crowd. Not so much the people he went with – he couldn’t remember them now if he tried – but he remembers the music and the charge and the sound and the joy.

And then it crumbles because it’s not enough, just impressions, captured moments, and the bits in between are blanks or shades of grey, things he should remember, but doesn’t. He would remember if someone described them to him, but they would have no feeling and no meaning and they would leave him again just as suddenly. So he thinks instead of Indira, who has dark skin and dark eyes – he’s quite certain she does – and smells of stars and is made up with oranges and spice. The other one… the other one… Joan, he thinks – he remembers the heat of her and that’s all, but that’s all that matters because she never wanted to remember him or be remembered in turn.

“That’s a lovely song,” a nurse says, entering the room. She’s come to check his pulse, she says, take his temperature, keep an eye on things. She’s more pleasant than the other nurses although there is nothing to distinguish her from them and he asks her where Murdoc is – greasy-looking bloke, all black, leather jacket – but she’s sure she doesn’t know him, so he asks her what song she’s talking about.

“The one you were singing,” she tells him. “La-da-da something something depths of your galaxy eyes, something starlight pierce my heart, map its chambers something something whispering dark of you… Or some such thing. Is it from the radio? I haven’t heard it before, but they only play the easy listening around here.”

“Dunno,” he tells her. He’s never heard it either. “Are there bugs in your walls?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Good, ‘cause I can’t see ‘em.”

“Well, that’s encouraging, I suppose,” she says and he knows he’s lost her by saying something stupid. “Your pulse is a little fast, but nothing scary. Someone will be along shortly to set up a monitor—“

“No,” he says. “I dun want one.”

“It won’t hurt you.”

“Dun like ‘em.”

“Now, Stuart—“

“Dun call me that!”

He clamps his hands to his ears, a childish gesture, and one he isn’t proud of, but feels powerless to stop. It’s the fastest and easiest way to not hear what should be the simplest and easiest thing to understand.

“It’s on your chart.”

“I’s not who I am. M’name’s 2-D. Should say on your chart to call me 2-D.”

“Either way, we don’t have the staff to watch you all the time,” she tells him. “We need to set up a monitor.”

“But I dun want one. I dun want—”

“Ease off, Dents. I swear to Hell I can’t leave you anywhere for two bloody minutes.”

Murdoc saunters through the door as if he had only followed him from the assessment room, carrying a brown bag, a steaming paper cup, and a look of exasperation.

“Is it necessary to hook him up?” he asks the nurse. “He isn’t too trusting of equipment. I can sit here and keep an eye on him. Give a shout if something happens.”

The nurse says something about his heart rate that Murdoc counters by telling her monitoring it won’t do any good if the monitor stresses him out, invalidating any reading they manage to get. She agrees to consult with the doctor and leaves them.

“So, this is my day then,” Murdoc says, collapsing into a chair beside the bed. He cracks the lid of the cup and takes a sip.

The smell of the liquid is bitter and hot, but the smell from the bag is worse: greasy, yeasty, and burnt around the edges. It makes his stomach turn.

“Wassat?” he asks as Murdoc dives into it, pulling out a wrapped package.

“Bacon butties and coffee. Got ‘em down the street. I didn’t eat yet and you’re not gonna, so I thought I’d please myself.”

The words do weird things to his stomach. His brain insists he’s hungry, he’s been up a while and hasn’t eaten, and he _likes_ bacon sandwiches, so the association is good, but the smells are overpowering, tearing down his throat like paint stripper.

“If you puke and put me off my breakfast, I swear to Lucifer himself, I will smother you with that pillow and leave you here,” Murdoc tells him. “Just lie back and breathe deeply. Through your mouth, if you have to.”

He does so and tries to think of anything other than diner food and Murdoc’s table manners. He stares at the ceiling and counts to ten, then to twenty, then to one hundred, but gets lost somewhere along the way. He tries to think of Indira, but doesn’t want to associate a nice time with being so sick, so he stops and just looks at the ceiling, which is full of tiny spiders. There are more nurses and more conversations, but he ignores them all and lets Murdoc deal with them. He doesn’t want to and doesn’t feel good and Murdoc’s more real than they are anyway, more real, maybe, than him.

The smell of grease goes stale as he lies there and the feverish feeling subsides, his overall pain increasing as it goes. His melting bones turn to shaky hands and a shivery body and his head hurts more as he tries to focus on the ceiling, which isn’t full of spiders at all, but tiny holes, panelling that can be removed for maintenance. His stomach settles, but the rest of his digestive system shifts into overdrive and he groans as the first wave of cramps hits him.

Murdoc blocks him when he tries to get up.

“I need the toilet,” he complains.

“How are the spiders?”

“Sod off with your spiders.”

“You should stay down. They left a bucket for you to puke in.”

“A’s not the fuckin’ problem,” he snaps, wincing as the sound of his own voice rips through his skull.

“Goodbye happy trip, hello withdrawal,” Murdoc says and lets him up. “There’s a bathroom by the door. If you’re gonna be a twat, you can stumble there on your own. ”

There is and he gets there with only time enough to set himself up before his body voids itself mercilessly in retaliation for pumping it full of the pharmaceuticals he needs to function like a normal person. A relatively normal person. A person, anyway.

And for all his talk, Murdoc is waiting to catch him when he staggers back out, pale and shaky from the extreme physical challenge of washing his hands.

“Not too bad, not too bad,” Murdoc mutters, walking him back to the bed. “Sit up this time, they’re more likely to think you’re mentally competent. Can’t keep you if you’re mentally competent and don’t want to stay. You’re probably hurting, but shouldn’t be too far into it yet. Try to look fresh and lively. I’ve sent someone to see if we can’t get a prescription for your regular meds. Give you a little something before we go. Drink some water, you need to rehydrate.”

He drinks and there’s more, but he only half-listens, learning the things he’ll need to say to be released, memorizing the cues and prompts. It’s all stage work and he’s done that before, so it doesn’t take much of his mind to retain it, not for such a short duration. There are brief conversations and he smiles to bedazzle, listening to advice, answering questions, and signing documents that are read to him confirming that he is who he says he is, that this is his doctor, that this is his prescription, that he understands he is leaving of his own accord and any tests that have begun will be finished and, should anything alarming arise, he will be contacted. Murdoc gives him something, his real pills and a glass of water, and he suffers one more misadventure in the bathroom before everything normalizes and his head clears.

He’s also hungry and tells Murdoc so. Repeatedly. Because he is _starving_. He hasn’t eaten and Murdoc has and his body has forcibly rejected anything he might have consumed in the past twenty-four hours, if not forty-eight, and Murdoc agrees only because he hasn’t got any meat on him and if something isn’t done, his stomach might start eating itself and Murdoc’ll be damned if he spends the _rest_ of his day in the hospital.

They hit a pub for fish and chips, which he consumes fast enough to not be sure of the taste, and then he calls Noodle to apologize for missing their trip to the cinema, that he was sick, and as soon as he gets home they will set a make-up date as immediately as tomorrow if need be because he feels awful about it. And then he picks at Murdoc’s fish and chips and threatens to finish them all by sheer dint of Murdoc not being fast enough because he is _starving_ and Murdoc orders him a bacon sandwich to put him off. It ends up being a bit more than he needs to eat, but he doesn’t feel sick at all, just full and lazy, and he grouses when Murdoc insists on taking a walk around a nearby park.

“Just wanna sleep,” he tells Murdoc as they wander around the paths. There’s a pond in the centre of the park and they make their way toward it for lack of anything better to do.

“I wanted to sleep this morning, so call it even,” Murdoc says. “You just spent most of the day either heaving up or shitting out your guts. I’m not having you in the car on a full stomach until you’re steady.”

“Do we have’ta walk?” he says, cupping a hand to his belly.

“Best way to tell if you’ll keep it down,” Murdoc tells him even as he burps, grimacing at the stale taste. “Case in point. Besides, exercise is good for you and I don’t want you dozing off on a bench.”

“If I doze off, you can duck me inna pond,” he says, yawning in spite of his boast.

“I can duck you in the pond anyway.”

Murdoc doesn’t body-check him with much force, but he’s walking near the edge, looking for fish or frogs, and isn’t ready. He stumbles sideways, losing his balance, and topples into the water, arms windmilling, gasping for breath as his head goes under briefly and then breaks the surface. He panics a moment and flails, his stomach twisting into knots, until he realizes the pond is less than four feet deep – maybe less than three and a half – and he can stand up easily, dripping water and weeds.

It must be the funniest thing Murdoc has seen in some time because he howls so hard on the bank that he can barely catch his breath.

“You weren’t supposed to go over, you bellend!” Murdoc shouts at him as he slogs his way back up onto the grass. “You’ve got the grace of drunk sloth.”

“I could’a drowned!” he wails, which only makes Murdoc laugh harder.

“The water’s barely past your waist!”

“I din’t know that! I went under first,” he protests. “I’s cold!”

“It’s a nice day, you’ll dry off.”

“The wind’s cold. I’m wet.”

“You and me, both,” Murdoc says, fishing up a cigarette packet. “Here then, take off your coat, we’ll sit on the bank until it’s dry. I don’t want you dripping all over the car any more than I want you puking in it.”

Murdoc lights two cigarettes and passes him one as he gets his jacket off and spreads it out on the grass. They both sit down on the ground beside it, and he would almost be grateful to the ducking for letting him sit, except the momentary panic has cramped his stomach, turning his lazy fullness into discomfort. He flops down on his back to stretch out and loosen up a little and Murdoc exacerbates the problem by chuckling and patting his belly – none too gently – although he does not feel there is any ill intent. It’s just the part of him that’s easiest to reach.

They’re both right: it’s a nice day, but the wind is cold and it isn’t long before he’s shivering. He tries his best to ignore it, blowing smoke rings until his cigarette reaches the filter, and then flicks it at the pond’s edge. Murdoc follows suit, and then looks down at him a while before touching one hand to his bare arm.

“You really are cold, aren’t you?” Murdoc says, taking off his jacket and laying it aside. “A right bleedin’ icicle. I swear, we need to install a heater when we change the filter. Come on, then. Toss up.”

Murdoc stretches out on the grass with a come-along gesture and he isn’t quite sure what to do. He nudges over a little until he’s flush up against Murdoc, who’s practically a furnace in comparison, and tries to turn away, but Murdoc reaches across to grab his furthest arm and bodily flips him over, spilling him across his chest.

“If you’re going to queer a thing, do a proper job of it,” Murdoc fake-leers, wrapping an arm around his shoulders to lock him in place and tossing the leather jacket over him. It reeks of sweat and alcohol, but is incredibly warm, as warm as Murdoc, and he huddles in that space, leeching the heat and greedily taking what comfort he can from the moment. Murdoc is solid and real in a way that few others are.

“Keep walkin’, Nosey Parker,” he hears Murdoc threaten from somewhere above his head. “He’s had a fall in the pond. He’s cold. Go fuck a stump. Ignore ‘em, mate,” Murdoc tells him. “They’re dicks.”

He doesn’t much care. Let people be dicks if they want to. Murdoc’s certainly never given two shits about it and he’s so used to odd looks that they don’t faze him. He’s warming up, now, with his head on Murdoc’s shoulder and his arm flung over Murdoc’s chest, and that’s all he really cares about.

Murdoc does and says nothing about this, aside from giving his hair a little ruffle every now and then. He can be kind and warm and caring, in a rough and ragged sort of way.

He’s told it’s just a tactic, a skill used by abusers, and that Murdoc is an abuser. Murdoc abuses him and then gets back in his good graces with a whisper and a touch. This is what they tell him, and they don’t understand.

He knows.

He knows. He knows. He knows. Murdoc abuses him. Murdoc gets off on abuse. Sometimes needless, pointless cruelty. Sometimes directed anger and fury. And, yes, he will be sweet as pie afterward, lavishing care and compliments – if sometimes facetiously – and maybe it’s a tactic, but not always, he thinks. As impatient as Murdoc was, as insulting as he was, as needless as the ducking in the pond was, there was no reason for Murdoc to take care of him today. He could have fucked off home and left him at the mercy of whomever owned the party house – it wouldn’t have been the first time – but he stayed, and fought the hospital, and fed him, and warmed him (even though the chill was Murdoc’s fault anyway).

And they don’t understand that he’s known Murdoc longer than anyone else, except for his parents, and he’s not even sure about that. Because they don’t understand that brains are weird and trauma is weird and a dent in the head might give you amnesia, or it might do something more sinister, not wiping out events, but only their meaning. Stripping people, not of names or of value, but of feeling.

They don’t understand what it’s like to wake up to a snippet of music that brings life to the world and erupts into memories of a concert, full of nuanced emotion, and then look into the face of a person who says they were there with you, and their name is familiar – Eric Middleton – but you know nothing about them.

Nothing.

If you’re told you went to school together, you know it’s true, but you couldn’t tell them what you did together. If they tell you what you did together, you know it’s true, but you don’t remember how it felt to do it. The information is right, but meaningless, and you might as well have never been born, because you never lived.

The thing about mates, especially growing up before the internet, is this: you’re stuck with who you get. The kids on your street become your mates because there’s no one else. You played together because they were near and eventually built a friendship based on shared experiences because you sure as shit had nothing else in common. Remove the experience from the friendship and it unravels.

It isn’t that he didn’t try. He did. They came alone or in groups, to say hi, to ask him how he was doing, and it was very kind of them, but although they spoke to him as though they knew him, he failed to connect. Although they had gone to concerts together, they didn’t always like the same music. Although they had gone to movies together, they didn't always like the same genres. Although they had done many activities together, they didn't actually enjoy them all, but they did them all the same because their mates enjoyed them and that was what you did when you had nothing better to do.

But now everyone was leaving for higher education, getting jobs, getting girls, and there was no time to re-knit the past, to re-experience all those events, to re-connect.

Everyone drifted away and he told himself it was his appearance, that he freaked people out, that he was a horror, because it was easier to accept than the realization that he had nothing in common with his mates, nothing at all, and his friendships were based on convenience. It was easier to accept he was a horror than that his past was divorced from meaning. Easier to accept he was a horror than that he was brain-damaged and no one had time for that.

He had even lost all association with his parents. The first time he saw them upon waking, they meant nothing. He knew them, but felt nothing, and he remembered the way his mother cried when he looked at her blankly, digging for scraps of feeling and finding nothing.

However, they had had an advantage over his schoolmates. They loved him. They touched him, hugged him, kissed him. His mother first – for what proper English boy does not outgrow his father’s affections? – but his father, too, in time, and the feel of them, the smell of them – perfume and antiseptic, aftershave and motor oil – the constant presence of them began to re-knit the gaps in his memory, filling them with colour, smell, and sound.

It was slow going. Is still slow going. There are gaps that continue to be filled.

But Murdoc was there from the start.

Murdoc did not exist before 2-D woke up, and then he was there, vibrant and unblemished, a man sprung whole from an event (an accident, or an awakening), a man with music, a man who wanted him to sing and play keyboards, a man who gave him chances others only dreamed of.

A man who called him a god.

And, most importantly, a man who was real in ways few others were real. Complete, cut from whole cloth, tied to nothing and to no one, his own person, the first real person he could remember since his birth, which, for all intents and purposes, was the moment he opened his eyes and stood up on the pavement.

He owed Murdoc his life: as a musician, as a singer, as a member of a band, for waking him up and making him famous, but, most of all, for being something he could see clearly, something he could hold on to. For bringing others into his life that he could hold on to. He owes Murdoc his life and he takes the abuse because it’s better than a world without Murdoc: a grey and shattered landscape strewn with flashes of events, but devoid of people, bereft of meaning.

The world that belonged to Stuart Pot.

“Do you need another ducking?” Murdoc asks, scratching his scalp.

“Not sleeping,” he replies, but doesn’t move. The massage feels nice and he’ll keep it as long as he can.

“Then maybe get up, Dents. I want to get home today.”

He does so, reluctantly. His jacket is still damp, but dry enough, he supposes. It’s still a bit chill, but the car will be warm, so a little damp isn’t too bad.

It occurs to him, as he pulls up his collar, that the night before is beginning to erase itself, all vestiges of the party evaporating into the ether. There was nothing important about it, nothing worth keeping, not even the music. Just drugs and sex and… and…

His heart seizes when he realizes he can’t remember her name. He doesn’t expect to hear from her again, or even come across her at another party, but he can’t afford to lose any more people. He can’t—

“Hold up, D. You’ve sprung a leak,” Murdoc says and reaches up to wipe his eyes with one thumb for the second time that day. “You’re too excitable. What’s got you wound up this time?”

_( …she was dark… she was stars… )_

“Nothin’. Issa wind, prob’ly,” he mumbles. “I’s cold. Stings a bit.”

_( …radiology… two brothers… )_

“Malarky.”

He fidgets a little, knowing Murdoc won’t understand because he doesn’t have the words to explain.

“I’s just… I dun remember her name. The girl I was with.”

_( …dark hair… dark eyes… dark skin… )_

“Why care about some bird on the make? I’m the one who sat with ya,” Murdoc says, lighting another cigarette as they head for the car. “Who else do you need?”

_(Indira. Her name is Indira.)_

“Nobody, I guess,” he says and Murdoc pats him on the shoulder.

“There’s my lad. You got limited head space there, Dents. Don’t waste it on the dross.”

Her name is Indira. She has dark skin, and dark hair, and dark eyes. Her make-up is accentuated with flecks of gold that look like stars. She smells of oranges and spice, a mix of her shampoo and perfume. She’s studying to be a radiologist. She has two brothers and the voice of a true Londoner. She played a game with him and he will never see her again, but he loves her.

He loves her because she is a memory and remembers her because he loves her, the feel of her, the smell of her, real like few others in his life.

He loves his father, tinkerer and tradesman, aftershave and motor oil, stylophones and keyboards, one of the few to rise from the ashes.

He loves his mother, nurse and protector, perfume and antiseptic, kitchens and corridors, his first link to the past.

He loves his bandmates, Russel and Noodle, drummer and guitarist, musicians and friends, alive and vibrant, cut from whole cloth, people of the new world.

The car is comfortably warm and makes him feel better about the damp. He wants another cigarette, but will wait until they get home, unless Murdoc offers him another. He doesn’t want to ask, not today, when he has already been a burden.

He’s in luck, however, as Murdoc holds the pack out to him.

“Only a few left,” he says. “You might as well take ‘em. Just save me one for the half-way mark.”

He shakes out a cigarette and borrows Murdoc’s lighter. He doesn’t trust his so soon after a ducking.

He leans back in his seat and breathes smoke out in a sigh, grinning lazily when Murdoc cuffs him on the ear – very playfully, hardly any force – and calls him a mess. It’s practically a term of endearment.

“Still with me? You dragged my arse out of bed this morning. You sure as Hell aren’t sleeping while I drive.”

“No worries. I’ll sing,” he says.

“Don’t fucking sing. I have to listen to you every day as it is.”

“We can both sing. Duet.”

“No fucking duets.”

“You never sing. Duet.”

“Sod off, Nancy.”

His grin only broadens. He knows that if he starts singing a song that demands a response, then Murdoc will jump in. Like it or not, he’ll be dragged into it, unconsciously humming along until the moment comes for him to sing. Then he’ll join in and maybe he’ll be angry about it later, but maybe he won’t. Either way, the price will be worth it.

Murdoc Niccals is not an easy man to read, but he is the most real person in the world. He is a bassist and an abuser. A friend and a bully. Kind and hurtful. Strong and sadistic. His grip is iron. His control is absolute. He does nothing, takes nothing, gives nothing that is not to his advantage. Murdoc was there from the beginning, is there still, will be there forever. He owes Murdoc his life.

No one understands, least of all Murdoc, but he loves him all the same.


End file.
